University of Northern Iowa

European Influences in Asia Author(s): Thomas W. Knox Source: The North American Review, Vol. 141, No. 344 (Jul., 1885), pp. 85-93 Published by: University of Northern Iowa Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25118509 . Accessed: 26/04/2014 08:04
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INASIA. EUROPEAN INFLUENCES

For more than a thousand years Asia has been subjected to the of Europe. influences They began with the overland commerce was controlled that by the Italian republics, and were con largely who had almost a monop tinued and expanded by the Portuguese, a hundred for Then came the traffic of Oriental years. nearly oly East India companies, with their powerful and English Dutch which obtained the right of eminent domain and ruled the Orient French and Dan with a hand of iron down to a very recent date. ish East India companies were of brief existence, but the Dutch its monopoly and became wealthy of company flourished through of and the exclusion of the other the natives, trade, oppression Wars in Europe com than its own agents and people. Europeans the Handel Maat in 1795. Its successor, its dissolution pelled or in had no such 1824, Association, organized schapij, Trading exclusive powers as the old company, though enough remains to no single association of its business profitable. make Probably men has ever exerted as much influence upon the commerce and of the world as the English East India Company, which civilization A.D. in 1600 and practically continued without interruption began in 1857. down to the Indian mutiny An association of merchants sent to the East in 1601 a fleet of five ships, the largest of 600 tons burden ; in twenty years it had obtained land and established trading stations at half a dozen points in India, and also in Java, Sumatra, Its fleets in Siam, and several islands of the Malay archipelago. so the and of did the creased, company's ships, and it is tonnage not surprising that in course of time it required an army to pro In 1661 it was authorized to make peace or war tect its interests. with any power not of the Christian religion, and it lost no time in We are probably indebted to "John making use of its authority. in the East, as this powerful corporation was known Company,"

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for the historic preamble and resolutions, sometimes attributed to : " Whereas, it has been decreed that the saints the Pilgrim Fathers that we are the saints." shall inherit the earth ; therefore Besolved, on of Duke his "I leave no enemies Said the Alva, death-bed, behind me; I've shot them all." John Company had a peaceful mo nopoly of commerce in the East, as it allowed no interlopers to estab and silenced as far as possible all accounts of op lish competition, of in the interest of its coffers or of the private natives the pression of its officials. Native purses potentates were instructed by the of the rather than sword, logic argument, and the by documentary a had musket influence in the advan English weighty teaching tages of commerce with the white stranger from the land beyond the seas. Bivals from other nations were not to be tolerated ; the of Goa, with a Portuguese were reduced to the single possession of not more than half a million ; the Dutch were ex population pelled from Ceylon, where they had a valuable commerce ; and Les Indes Orientales Fran?aises, which once covered a large part of the great Indian peninsula, now include Pondicherry, Mah?, and with than fewer hundred inhabit two thousand Chandernagore, Just before its extinction ants. the English East India Company ruled a territory containing two hundred million people. It had a of commerce its to had extended 240,000 soldiers, army standing China and other parts of the East, and its board of directors formed a court from whose decisions there was no appeal. Its charter came up for renewal once in and from Elizabeth to years, twenty Victoria the British sovereigns had signed it with little or no hesita tion. There was every prospect that the charter would again be of '57 attracted the attention of granted in 1858 ; but the mutiny Government and people to the misrule of India, and with one stroke of the royal pen the Company was blotted out, and its vast interests were transferred to the Crown. and responsibilities To point a moral rather than to adorn a tale, have I sketched the history of John Company through a period covering more than two and a half centuries. To the Company we owe much for the ideas in India from 1600 to 1857, but we owe spread of occidental a great deal more to the Government that succeeded it for the The Company was organ progress of the work since that time. ized and managed for the sole purpose of making money, and if India derived benefit from its operations, the event was not due to ideas of the board of directors. Since the mu any philanthropic

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India is still tiny things have changed greatly for the better. held and managed mainly for commercial purposes, and to afford places for surplus men of the upper class, and the British gush " " our in the East about noble mission must be taken with a good or of salt, ; but commerce has many pinches rejected altogether been thrown open to everybody, and no company or individual has ; many restrictions upon the natives have any longer a monopoly been removed or greatly modified, and the condition of the subject race is vastly improved. In 1857 there were but two hundred miles of railway in operation in all that enormous peninsula?one line of a hundred and twenty miles northward from Calcutta, and another of eighty miles from Bombay. Now there are eight thou sand miles of railway in India, and the iron horse has an unbroken track from Cape Comorin, where he sniffs the spicy breezes of Cey or Peshawur, where he drinks from the melted lon, to Darjeeling snows of the Himalayas. He can traverse the country from Bom and Benares, and before long bay to Calcutta by way of Allahabad Steamers he will have a shorter route through the Nagpore Hills. and the the coast line the is every rivers, upon telegraph ply along are are in all the and mails the native towns, newspapers where, are with and that made the transported celerity certainty, security, the conditions of contracts for postal transportation. that India has ever Steam is the most efficient missionary and his fol known ; not all the teachings of St. Francis Xavier nor at of lies the who entombed Heber, lowers, Bishop eloquence can equal the work of the fleshless steed of George Ste Madras, locomotive has shaken the faith of the Hindoo The phenson. more than centuries of Christian teaching, and brought confusion to the heart of the native priest. and perplexity have Pilgrimages A century been enjoined upon the faithful from time immemorial. and the devotee that jour ago a pilgrimage was a serious matter, on or Jaga to foot the of Benares, Allahabad, neyed holy places and perhaps for years. nath was absent from his home for months, The wealthy worshiper, traveling with all the luxury of the East, was compelled to move leisurely, and could not make his pilgrim a liberal expenditure of time. At present the railway age without shortens the road of the pilgrim to a wonderful degree ; and four so that poor classes of carriages are run by the Indian companies, and rich are provided for. The priests have sought to compel on foot, as before ; but, their followers to make their pilgrimages

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for them, the sacred books do not specify the mode of unhappily a reaching holy place, so long as it is reached at all. Little or no is given to the commands of the religious teachers, and attention trains are crowded to their utmost capacity during the fourth-class The nabob on a similar mission charters the season of pilgrimage. an entire carriage for himself and family, and is whirled to the The magic of the white man place of worship by an express train. is more potent than the ordinances of the priests, who are seeking for new light by which to control their unruly subjects, but thus The motion of the railway wagon is shaking far have found none. the religions of India till they threaten to crumble in fragments. Caste, too, is being destroyed by the iron horse and the road on which he runs. Under the rules of caste, the population is divided into four great bodies, with numerous A man of a subdivisions. high caste cannot touch one of a lower without being polluted ; under the native laws in some parts of India, a Brahmin had the right to slay a Sudra that touched him ever so lightly by the merest A man accident, or even allowed his shadow to fall upon him. or a a not drink in from eat of cooked rice kettle, that cup, may of a lower caste; and if a Sudra in the has been used by a member the should mingle with a dozen Brahmins, disguise of a Brahmin to a degree that would require innocent twelve would be polluted of purity. long and costly penances to restore them to a condition I was once on a steamer going up the eastern coast of India, where three or four Brahmins were nearly starved to death by the acci dental breaking of their cooking-pot ; every other pot on board had or the equally detested been touched by the detested European, and of course the Moslem servants, and was therefore polluted, of was the very embodiment pearly rice cooked in the ship's galley more were and were four without wickedness. food, days They The railways dead than alive when the steamer reached Calcutta. of castes, other than al do not make provision for the separation com lowing those who can afford it to buy the exclusive right to or class fourth In the third and carriages all carriages. partments castes are bundled in together?Sudras, Brahmins, Vaisyas, Pari is like poverty in that it A omne et id ahs, genus. railway pilgrimage The pilgrims sit on long benches running makes strange bed-fellows. themselves athwart the carriages, and the Brahmins congratulate that by sitting carefully away from their inferiors they can avoid But the rolling of the carriages around the curves, the pollution.

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at the stations, the hurry of entering or leaving the vehicle, together with other things incident to the journey, spoil the charm, and the pilgrims are mixed up worse than were the infant charges of little Buttercup. The polluted Brahmin decides to keep the to avoid the trouble and expense of restoration matter to himself, to purity ; soon he finds he has suffered no bodily or spiritual harm, and in course of time his reason tells him that the whole caste busi ness is an absurdity. His dread of pollution is at an end or is greatly shaken, and while he has been learning respect for those beneath him, the lower castes have been losing reverence and fear of those that rank higher. The railway in India performs the same office as in other parts commerce and distributing of the world, in facilitating the products of the soil or the sea. The coast communicates rapidly with the and the interior coast the with the fruits of the hill ; interior, are for those of the and the maritime regions exchanged plains for the and the cocoanut for the du orange mango, country?the rian ; and in this way the people are taught that the world is not bounded by their horizon, and the blessings of all parts of the than ever before. country are more evenly distributed European are be modes of work and European ways of transacting business ing steadily diffused, and it is safe to say that the effect of the west ern civilization in the land of the Shastas and the Vedas has been of John Com greater during twenty-five years since the extinction than in it. entire pany any century preceding Let us turn now to Java and the Malay With archipelago. of four years, from 1811 to 1816, Java has been a the exception in one form or another for about the same time Dutch possession that the English have been established in India. Down to 1830 in the adoption the country made comparatively little progress of European but since then there has been a wonder civilization, ful advance in that direction. To the genius of General Van Den Bosch, regarded in his day as a visionary dreamer whose schemes were utterly impracticable, Java is indebted for the culture system that has dotted the island with prosperous villages tenanted by an industrious people, covered the whole region with well-tilled farms, and established a system of roads that render every locality acces sible. Eailways extend inland from the three principal ports, and before long they will be stretched from one end of the island to the of natives other. Thirty thousand Europeans hold twenty millions

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of the government is costly, and in subjection ; the administration but for after works is ; money public expended freely paying all East Indies deliver five million dol Dutch the expenses annually Java is one of the most densely peo lars into the home treasury. 337 persons to the square pled countries in the world, averaging has trebled since 1826, and the recent earth The population mile. to reduce the dispensation quake may have been a providential Travel through the length and rapid growth of the census-tables. breadth of Java, and you will rarely see a beggar ; good order pre vails everywhere, and there are no idlers, for the simple reason that and guaran the Government compels every man to be industrious, the native princes tees him the reward of his labor. Doubtless may wish to return to the old system, but there are few of the lower classes who would favor it. The same conditions prevail in a general way through the whole of the Malay archipelago ; the Dutch rule is by no means mild, but it is less rigorous than was and is far preferable to that of the Dutch East India Company, the constant warfare with which the native princes managed to kill time and their neighbors. The most is under British rule. important part of Burmah Steamers navigate the Irrawaddy to its head-waters, while the rail and will soon way extends to the frontier of the native kingdom, be at the gates of Mandalay, the capital. Siam preserves its inde but its capital city shows many evidences of pendence unimpaired, the influence of the Occident. Its enlightened young king has an earnest stu of the customs of and is the West, adopted many dent of our civilization. is His army is officered by foreigners, manner with of the and is drilled after equipped foreign weapons, ; he has established a postal system through the aid of the Europe to the American and his kingdom has been admitted Minister, Postal Union; the other the telegraph connects Bangkok with capitals of the globe, and the Siamese flag floats above a fleet of steamers plying on the Menam and forming a regular line to Singa The Malay peninsula is largely under British control, and pore. the port of Singapore commercial is one of the most important and centers of the Orient. to the east are Cochin-China Farther tri the under domination and French ; Cambodia, quite recently color has been extending its influence into the territory claimed by China, the greatest, oldest, and most populous empire of the world. The French are spreading the ideas of the West with the aid of

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glish with

the chassepot and the mitrailleuse, in the same way that the En have carried the blessings of commerce to the people of India the musket and sabre. In the interest of commerce, England made war upon China and compelled her to buy the opium that was the chief export of In dia ; and the entering wedge made by the opium war has been slow ly but surely driven till the wall of seclusion is everywhere broken down. from end to end may now travel unrestricted Foreigners of China, though they run occasional risks from a lawless mob, and that are denied the foreign merchant enjoys commercial privileges to the native. The Chinese were quick to perceive the advantages in some of its features, and have adopted of Western civilization of the intruders. There are them, somewhat to the discomfiture on the western banks, shipping houses, and insurance companies system, wholly capitalized and managed by Chinese, and there are steamboat and steamship companies plying on the great Chinese In the open ports the Chinese are rivers and along the coast.

upon the business formerly monopolized by steadily encroaching and Saigon, Chinese mer in ; Singapore, foreigners Hong Kong, the stranger and driving him into bank chants are supplanting an and A navy army have been created upon the Euro ruptcy. pean model ; Chinese dockyards are building ships of war like those of the great maritime powers ; and Chinese arsenals at Tientsin, Canton are making and rifles, Foochow, Eemington Shanghai, number of Gatling and Norden 2,700 daily, and a proportionate Two hundred thousand Chinese soldiers are armed feldt guns. in the European and drilled fashion, and the number can be in as can Less than as be fast it creased provided with weapons. an named adventurer Ward American years ago twenty-five men a an of Soo for the of thousand capture army organized succes his soon under it to and three thousand, grew Chow; first, and then Gordon?its strength and fame in sors?Burgevine So triumphant was its course that it became known as creased. " the Ever-Victorious ;" and from that germ has come the Chinese army of to-day. What may another twenty-five years develop ? of the foreigner from Some there are who foresee the expulsion the arts and arms we have given to the Orient. China through of four in China as men, and a population is so abundant Nothing or an of muster could hundred millions two, four, or ten army millions without a serious drain upon its resources. May there not

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or be, in the next quarter of a century, another Genghis Khan, another Tamerlane, who will roll the Orient upon the Occident over the route that was followed centuries ago by the great conquerors? has recently opened her doors to the Corea, the Hermit Nation, West and its influences, having first opened them to her neighbors, The whole of Siberia, from the Ural Mountains Japan and China. to the littoral of the Pacific and the Arctic Ocean, is under Western tours of the rule, and the events that have followed the European in the despotic Shah of Persia give promise of a rapid decrease lines are stretched over the powers of that monarch. Telegraph of his dominions, the railway is in the near length and breadth of Teheran, Tabreez, Astera future, and the European populations and infiuentially greater bad, and other cities grows numerically year by year. Bussian soldiers are carrying their flag southward over the great plains and through the mountain chains of Central Asia, with the northward advance of the English from simultaneously India. The skirmishers of the armies of two powerful nations are each other in the mountains of Afghanistan, and at confronting come news moment the of battle beneath the walls of any may
Herat.

Last but by no means least of the countries of Asia that have comes Japan. received the teachings and influences of the West, the memory of men hardly yet in middle Within life, Japan re mained closed to the world, save at the little island of Deshima in the harbor of Nagasaki, for two centuries the Dutch had where a trading-post. maintained In 1854 American audacity, under the an of of errand pretext charity, forced an entrance, and the story of Japan since that time reads like a romance. The whole system once secluded of government has been changed. The Emperor, from the gaze of all but a very few of the most favored mortals, now appears in public and can be seen by his most humble subject;: the daimios or feudal princes have been shorn of their power ; the samurai or military class no longer subsist upon the labor of the rest of the population, but must earn their living ; equality for all has been established etiquette by imperial decree ; and Japanese no longer requires a man to disembowel himself because another has affronted him. More than in China, and more than in India, customs have been adopted in Japan ; the railway and European the telegraph, the postal and banking systems, insurance, coinage, and many other institutions and have been taken from Europe

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America, including an inflated currency of paper, impaired nation Let us hope, for the repu al credit, and impending repudiation. tation of our part of the world, that the latter will be long deferred. ; the Japan has even gone so far as to adopt the dress of Europe has been laid aside for the dress coat tasteful clothing of Nippon and the nation has lost greatly in pictur and its appurtenances, out of place in our western A is as much esqueness. Japanese as we in should be The Oriental his. garb rarely appears to ad in the of and it was a most unfor the Occident, garments vantage for decree was issued tunate the when Japan imperial day The for of dress occasions prog ceremony. prescribing European ress of Japan toward the civilization of the West has been, in the opinion of some of its friends, more rapid than was judicious, and there have been fears of a reaction. Such an event is not by any means can never be restored, and impossible, but the old-time seclusion nations of the to remain among the accessible Japan is destined With an army on the European model, with a navy of her world. own construction, with fleets of her own steamers plying along the coast and to foreign ports, with the railway and the telegraph, and with schools where the learning of the whole world is taught to in a telligent youths and to men of middle age, Japan has undergone Commodore miraculous when the short of little since day change and trained Perry anchored his fleet in the shadow of Fusiyama, his guns upon the osier walls of the forts of Shinagawa. Thomas W. Kkox.

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